


What if the storm ends... and I don't see you. (Discontinued)

by jackinthebox123



Category: Invader Zim
Genre: Apocalypse, M/M, might not be any romance idk, pretty much everyone is dead, we'll see
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-12
Updated: 2020-09-12
Packaged: 2021-03-07 02:22:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,380
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26419429
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jackinthebox123/pseuds/jackinthebox123
Summary: What if Zim succeeded?I think we all know things would go horribly wrong.
Relationships: Dib/Zim (Invader Zim)
Comments: 5
Kudos: 23





	What if the storm ends... and I don't see you. (Discontinued)

**Author's Note:**

> I never double check my work so if it sucks well, oh well.

Zim stood on top of the roof of his house, feeling the hot, smoky air lift his antenna slightly. He’d been staring for the past few hours, completely still on the outside, even as the occasional ember landed on his arm and slowly cooled. Staring out at the burned and smashed debris that now covered the entire Earth he’d set out to conquer, all except for a ring around his house and yard, starkly green against the black and grey that covered the earth and the smoky orange that filled the air. He’d taken down the shield that’d protected his own place when the fires died down, come up to see the damage. He wasn’t entirely sure how he felt, because though he was still on the outside, his inside felt like it was on fire, just as the world had been, hours ago. 

Gir crawled up onto the roof, looking up at him. “Hiya! I swallowed a wrench!” 

Zim narrowed his eyes, then looked down at him. “What are you doing out of the base? Go back inside.”

“Only if you come with meeee and we can eat nachos and watch tv and roll around in the nachos and become the nachos!” Gir screeched excitedly. Zim sighed, facepalming. “We can’t watch tv, Gir. I’ll go find a movie for you to-” 

Zim quickly flattened his antenna as the expected Gir tantrum started at being told he couldn’t do the specific thing he wanted to do. After a few seconds his antenna stuck up again. “Shut up, Gir! We must go inside and contact the Tallest. They must know the Earth is ready for conquering. Or… colonizing.” He corrected himself, after realizing there wasn’t much left to conquer. His face fell as he realized they might be disappointed by the state of the Earth, but his thoughts were interrupted as he broke out in a coughing fit, his pak sparking.

It had been working hard this whole time to filter the air for him, but it was beginning to become overloaded with the toxins. He crawled back down into his house, deciding to make a gas mask for himself before contacting the Tallest. He went down the trash can into his basement, then froze as he saw the giant circular tank taking up the middle of the room, holding his arch nemesis unconscious inside, suspended in liquid and with wires coming from his limbs and mouth, checking his vitals and keeping him both alive and unconscious. Zim stared at Dib for a moment, then turned and headed to his desk, starting to gather materials for a functioning gas mask and letting out a little cough again. 

As he worked, not even having to pay much attention to such a simple project, he remembered the events of the past few days. The preparation, building the machine that would explode into trillions of tiny pieces, spreading all over the globe and settling down on the ground before sparking flames. Siphoning all the water off of the earth and sending it all off into space in a ball, as though it was a water planet, so that a single human could not survive. Kidnapping Dib before he could have a chance to stop him, and suspending him in this unbreakable tank. He couldn’t believe it worked. Dib didn’t seem as perceptive to plans to hurt or capture him as he was to plans to take over the world, Zim didn’t even find it that difficult to capture him. 

Zim remembered watching through a blue impenetrable force field as the world was set on fire, people running and screaming and, once they realized Zim was the culprit, smashing their angry and agonized fists against his forcefield, trying to break through and get to him. He’d never been so conflicted, the triumph he was supposed to be feeling warring with the fear of the humans breaking through and getting to him and a strange sense of loss as he watched all the places he’d seen and wandered so often get burned to the ground. He shoved that last feeling out of his mind, not even wanting to explore whatever dumb and very non-Irken feelings came with that. He coughed, then lifted up his finished gas mask. The smoke had begun to seep into the house, so he went ahead and put it on, then reached back and disconnected his pak, quickly getting to work cleaning it out and replacing a couple wires that had been damaged by the toxins.

He reconnected his pak to his back and called Gir down into the room, mostly to keep an eye on him, before finally calling the Tallest. He wrung his hands, possibly more nervous to call them than he’d ever been, and he even let out a little squeak as they answered, inwardly berating himself at the show of weakness. He put his fist over his chest and bowed his head. “My Tallest. My mission was a success.”

“Uhhhh… Zim? You haven’t died yet?” Tallest red asked, crossing his arms skeptically. Tallest purple, eating out of a bag of doughnuts, narrowed his eyes. “Yeah, weren’t you like, exploding the last time we saw you?”

Zim narrowed his eyes as he looked back up. “Er, yes, that was an unfortunate accident. But nothing so simple could take down me! The incredible Zim!” He found it difficult to put the normal amount of gusto behind his words, but shook his head and continued. “But no, I have not died, and I have finally completed the mission of taking over the Earth. You may direct the Irken fleet this way, it is ripe for the taking.”

  
“Hmm, I don’t really want to though.” Purple said. “Do you have snacks?”

Zim froze. “Er… No. At least not yet, my Tallest. But if you give me some time, I can grow a farm and begin cultivating some food-”

“Uggghhh that’ll take too much time. Besides, it’s not like we had any intention of going to Earth anyway. Like, ever.” Red said, waving a hand. “I mean why would we want to go to an ugly, snackless planet to see a food drone we don’t even like?”

Zim frowned, his antenna falling a little under the scrutinous gaze of the Tallests. “But… There are no food service drones here. It’s only me, an invader. Surely you want to come claim this planet for your own, after I’ve gone and conquered it for you?”

“Man you’re really fucking stupid aren’t you?” Red said, while Purple snickered behind his hand. “You’re not an invader, Zim. After your destruction during Operation Impending Doom 1, did you really think we’d put you in charge of some important secret mission? No, that mission went to Invader Larb. Earth is useless to us ZIm. We are never coming there.”

“Oh, so we’re telling him about that now?” Purple asked Red quietly. He cleared his throat but before he could answer Zim spoke up again. 

“But, I took over the earth for you. E-Even if it’s not a secret mission, there are many resources here that can…” He tapered off as he realized two things. First, there were no more resources, and wouldn’t be for a couple hundred years while the world recovered, and that was only if Zim could bring the water back. The second thing he realized was that the Tallest weren’t listening. Purple had turned away to order some specific and difficult to obtain food, while Red called over to one of the navigators to figure out what was next on the schedule, blowing up planets or a party for finally telling Zim how worthless he was. Red glanced back at the camera. “Oh, did we not hang up yet? Zim, you’ve been banished to the planet Earth, we don’t ever wanna see you again, yada yada yada. Cut the feed? Oh wait, who’s in that tank back-” The call stopped. 

Zim stood staring at the screen with wide eyes for a couple hours, even as Gir tugged on his arm yammering something about a storage room full of moose ham and the Computer tried to inform him a status update on the state of the earth and the ocean floating in space. The voices didn’t get through to him until much later, and he finally moved, antenna lifting to listen to what was going on and turning his head. 

“Computer! Ready my ship, I must retrieve the... “ He gave an exaggerated shudder. “Water… so that we may make Earth habitable again. Perhaps when I’ve grown enough resources, made enough exotic snacks, the Tallest will see the use of coming here anyway.” He paced slightly, fixing his mask as it started to slip down his face, resolving to fix the measurements to keep it secure later. 

“... Right away sir.” The computer said, in an annoyingly pitying voice. Zim narrowed his eyes at the ceiling, then glanced over at the tank. He wandered over and placed his hand on the glass. The last living human, huh? Amazing, how easy taking over the world had been without Dib to stop him. He wondered how Dib’s family had died. Wondered if they might even have survived. They were certainly smart enough to have some sort of bunker to hide from the chaos. Although he’d had his computer scan the globe, and it said nothing had survived, outside of everyone in the circle that was Zim’s house. He scratched at the glass with one finger then turned and walked away to get into his voot, taking off into space with a giant plastic bag to bring all the water back. 

\---

Zim arrived back much later, drenched, exhausted, and sizzling from the burning feeling of water on his skin. He took the elevator straight from the attic down to the basement to check on how the oceans settled back into place. They seemed to be doing perfectly fine, although it flooded some places that weren’t previously ocean. He disregarded it, since he was not directly affected, and started a lab to cultivate bacteria that would evolve into new, possibly more interesting creatures than what had inhabited the earth before. He glanced over at Dib, floating in the tank. Gir was currently upstairs, watching the few movies they'd managed to keep on DVD. Zim turned and walked over to the tank, reaching up to place a hand on it and scratching the glass lightly with his sharp fingertip. Then, for the first time of what would become a regular habit, he started to speak to the unconscious Dib. 

“Should I bring back the stinky, smelly humans? I could easily steal your DNA, modify it a bit, and make a new variation of human. Then clone them until there are enough to reproduce by themselves.” He made a face at the thought, then continued. “I wouldn’t bother, as the Irken race is clearly superior, but this place once fully populated by flora and fauna would be no place for the elite Irken race. Besides, we are not allowed to reproduce off of Irk.” He added as an afterthought. He thought in silence for a moment. 

“But I don’t even like humans. Perhaps I’ll leave this planet without an intelligent species. I’ll be the sole intelligent ruler of this planet, so that no other species gets in the way of my cultivation of snack foods.” He mused, before walking over to the controls, watching the vitals on the screen for a moment then down at the controls. “I think I might let you out. Show you what I’ve done to your world, bask in your despair for a bit, then put you back until I need you again. If I do. Computer! Release the Dib!”

“Yeah okay.” There was a whirring sound, a crunch, then the same whirring sound but backwards. “Error.”

Zim glanced up toward the ceiling, frowning. “What do you mean, error?”

“Cannot release the Dib human without 100% chance of life being terminated.” The computer responded. “Would you like me to open the tank anyway? He will die if I do.”

“N… no.” Zim said quietly. “But… why?? His vitals are perfectly balanced, as a humans should be!” 

“The toxin used to keep him asleep is dormant, but as soon as he’s awoken by the shock of leaving the suspension chamber it will poison him and he will die from a heart attack.” The computer answered. 

Zim reached up to grip his head, squeezing his eyes shut and trying oh so very hard not to let himself crack from this minor inconvenience, to shove it back along with the rest of his deadly emotions and figure out rationally what to do next. His thoughts were (thankfully) interrupted by Gir shooting into the room screeching in excitement on rocket propelled feet. He slammed into Zim and they went tumbling through the room, then slammed into the opposite wall. Zim groaned, sitting up and shoving Gir away from him. “What the fuck, Gir!”

“I finished the movie!! And all the movies!!! Let’s go get another movie!” Gir said excitedly, before sticking his tongue out. Zim sighed and dragged a hand down his face. “We can’t go get another movie, Gir, all the movie places have been burned down!” He snapped. 

Gir frowned then thought for a moment, before sitting up quickly. “I have an idea! You make a movie!” 

Zim shook his head quickly. “Absolutely not, Gir. I don’t have time for silly theatrics.” 

His eye twitched in annoyance as Gir started throwing a shrieking tantrum again, rolling around on the floor in a puddle of his own tears. “Do you want to be banished from the house??” He snapped. Gir sat up quickly, stopping his tantrum immediately. “I doooo.” He said after a moment. 

Zim was pleasantly surprised, then shrugged. “Fine, get out. But come back before the sun comes down, I will need your assistance later on.” … Probably. Mostly he didn’t want Gir getting lost if he wandered too far away. Gir started giggling as he stood up then rocketed up one of the elevators. 

Zim sighed, then turned to stare at the tank for a moment. After a while he turned to the bacteria lab to see how it was developing. 

\---


End file.
